An Israeli airstrike hit a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 22, including women and children.
Footage from the al-Falouja School showed rescue workers rushing casualties out of the school compound amid widespread debris and crowds of people. One video showed men wrapping a mangled, severed torso in a plastic sheet and putting body parts into a cooler.
Israeli forces have repeatedly struck schools, saying Hamas fighters use them as “command centers” to plan attacks without providing any credible evidence, as well as independent witnesses and investigators disputing such claims.
However, the strike have brought heavy civilian death tolls. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are living packed in schools across Gaza after fleeing their homes in the face of Israeli bombardment and offensives. More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced in the nearly yearlong conflict, according to the United Nations.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, authorities buried in a mass grave the bodies of 88 Palestinians that Israel returned to the Gaza Strip a day earlier. A bulldozer dug a trench in one of the city cemeteries, and the bodies were laid inside in blue plastic bags before the bulldozer covered them over with dirt.
Gaza's Health Ministry denounced what it called the “inhumane and immoral” way Israel had treated the bodies, saying they were sent back piled in a truck with no information to identify them.
Throughout Israel's offensives in Gaza, troops have dug up multiple graveyards as well as mass graves created at hospitals holding the bodies of Palestinians killed during assaults on the facilities. The military has taken an unknown number of bodies into Israel, saying it is searching for potential bodies of Israeli hostages or militants.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000 others, according to the latest figures released.